I heard an interview with one of the astronauts who said the only thing that bothered him about the picture was that it was sideways. When he saw the Earthrise, fom his perspective, the moon wasn't below him, it was to the right.

I thought that summed up the concept of "up" and "down" in space really well.

Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not."

"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

"I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up-many people feel small, because they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

"Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults."

"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

bbfreak:Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

A color picture, taken by an actual human floating in a tin can, of a recognizable Earth hovering over the bleak landscape of its satellite? Yeah, that's a bit more visceral that the others.

ltdanman44:In the years since, we have lost our way with space exploration.

"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not."

"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

"I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up-many people feel small, because they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

"Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults."

"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

A Cave Geek:ltdanman44: In the years since, we have lost our way with space exploration.

"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not."

"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

"I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up-many people feel small, because they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

"Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults."

"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

ltdanman44:In the years since, we have lost our way with space exploration.

Mmmm, no? We seem to be exploring it just fine from right here. Like we always did? These scientists you keep talking about? They all discovered about space from right here! No test pilots in tin cans required.

You seem to, on purpose, mix and match science with your desire for a giant rollercoaster ride.

bbfreak:Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

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The idea, I believe, is that it's more difficult to put a human in the position to take such a photograph than it is a machine.

Gonz:I heard an interview with one of the astronauts who said the only thing that bothered him about the picture was that it was sideways. When he saw the Earthrise, fom his perspective, the moon wasn't below him, it was to the right.

I thought that summed up the concept of "up" and "down" in space really well.

Something would just look bizarre with the moon on the right and the earth on the left. Like you were taking pictures of mountains out of the window of a train.

Absolutely not. Some of our greatest scientific advances have come from space exploration and experiments. I truly believe there is so much more for us to find, I just hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be a part of it. I want to be around for the next major breakthrough in science.

Wanting the human race to figure out the universe is not being selfish. It is the adventurer in me that hopes tomorrow is the day we discover something really special.

Hyperbole much? The most important space photo in history? That's what they said about the pale blue dot and the Hubble deep space and probably 1/2 dozen more photos along the way. Yes it's cool and yes it's iconic but most important is a tall order and pretty subjective.

oh Quanto, don't worry. Nobody will remember you. When we are mining the asteroids, when we occupy a Moon colony, when we are in orbit over Mars, there will be no monument to Quanto, anywhere. Your bones will lie forgotten and cold in the grave.

ltdanman44:In the years since, we have lost our way with space exploration.

"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not."

"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

"I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up-many people feel small, because they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

"Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults."

"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

[upload.wikimedia.org image 437x468]

This man is a national treasure.

I loved his '80's smash hit, 'Somebody's Watching Me'. I had no idea he knew so much about the universe.

Gonz:I heard an interview with one of the astronauts who said the only thing that bothered him about the picture was that it was sideways. When he saw the Earthrise, fom his perspective, the moon wasn't below him, it was to the right.

I thought that summed up the concept of "up" and "down" in space really well.

theorellior:bbfreak: Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

A color picture, taken by an actual human floating in a tin can, of a recognizable Earth hovering over the bleak landscape of its satellite? Yeah, that's a bit more visceral that the others.

I disagree, the event of humans around the moon for the first time is significant. The Picture it self being taken by robots or humans isn't.

bbfreak:theorellior: bbfreak: Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

A color picture, taken by an actual human floating in a tin can, of a recognizable Earth hovering over the bleak landscape of its satellite? Yeah, that's a bit more visceral that the others.

I disagree, the event of humans around the moon for the first time is significant. The Picture it self being taken by robots or humans isn't.

And I will say that the fact that a HUMAN took the picture, in real time, while actually THERE is rather significant.

Culturally, Pale Blue Dot is important, and Hubble Deep Field less so but still up there, but the color picture of Earth from the Moon is the one that is stamped across an entire generation. A good proxy for figuring out which one has been more iconic is to look at which photograph has been stamped across more book covers. It's a crude measure, but if you're skeptical it's about the only thing I can think of that would convince you about something that is pretty subjective.

When I talk to people of my father's generation, or my grandfather's generation, it's that image (and that of Armstrong touching ground on the Moon) that inspired them or shook up their ideas of what the universe was like. My grandfather grew up only dimly realizing that there was a whole big universe. Seeing people walk on the Moon, and seeing Earth through the eyes of people who had walked there, changed the way many people thought. It's a gripping realization that Earth is there and real and surrounded by the void of space, and also "Look at what we can do."

Historians don't credit "Pale Blue Dot" with a substantial influence on the modern Green and ecological movements, for instance. You do find the Earthrise iconography all over the '70s ecological propaganda, though. It's not a coincidence that a viscerally moving image of the world we live in would have an impact on the thought processes of a generation.

What morons like QA will never understand (in addition to the value of a 3D printer in space, which LOWERS THE COST OF SUPPLYING SPARE PARTS YOU DIPshiat) is the value of showing people while they should value, with a cultural/memetic tag of "a person was here." As a species, we're wired for a certain level of empathy, and something that carries with it the knowledge or the belief that a human was present and experienced what you're experiencing through film will be more powerful than something that was merely produced and manipulated by a robot. The orange-studded pictures of Titan make me excited, but it's nothing compared to being confronted with the reality of Earth in the Solar System in the Orion Arm in the Milky Way in the Local Group in the Universe.

While for broad planetary surveys robots are perfectly fine, robotics technology is nowhere near advanced enough for many, possibly most, scientific goals. First, any instruction to a robot to adjust its course of action must obey the speed of light. Across interplanetary distances, it builds up. Lots and lots of time is wasted just sending and receiving instructions. Second, wheels are fine but not great for traversing difficult ground. Many of the most interesting scientific surveys need to be conducted at locations where strata are disrupted - in other words, difficult ground. Third, human beings aren't that great at comprehending all the visual information they're confronted with unless it's in real time and close by. If you want to have human knowledge, reasoning, and intuition applied, you really need someone there. Fourth, no robot within a feasible technological horizon is as capable of self-repair as a human being. A lot of time and energy is expended on making robots fault-proof, and sometimes if a single bit is wrong the whole thing collapses. Fifth, assuming you can solve the other problems, artificial intelligence is nowhere near capable of handling independent scientific investigation on its own, and I'm not sure I want to live in a post-singularity world where that would be possible.

It's adding up all of those advantages that makes human beings on a cost/performance basis ideal for many kinds of scientific inquiry. That's entirely leaving out the human spirit of inquiry, discovery, and exploration - traits that make being a human worth living, and I question the humanity of people who would sacrifice that on the throne of the altar of some frankly unhinged rant about "immortal atoms" (which aren't immortal; proton decay will occur at some point or another).

ltdanman44:In the years since, we have lost our way with space exploration.

"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not."

"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

"I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up-many people feel small, because they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

"Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults."

"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

[upload.wikimedia.org image 437x468]

This man is a national treasure.

I knew it was just a matter of time before the fellatio of this guy would begin.

bbfreak:Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

ltdanman44:Quantum Apostrophe: You seem to, on purpose, mix and match science with your desire for a giant rollercoaster ride.

Absolutely not. Some of our greatest scientific advances have come from space exploration and experiments. I truly believe there is so much more for us to find, I just hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be a part of it. I want to be around for the next major breakthrough in science.

Wanting the human race to figure out the universe is not being selfish. It is the adventurer in me that hopes tomorrow is the day we discover something really special.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

Don't mind him. To QA, people saying "Hey, it'd be cool if one day we have the technology to explore space," is exactly the same as "OMG SPACE IS TOTES COOL AND SAFE LET'S GO NOW!"

AndreMA:bbfreak: Really subby? The most important space photo in history is the Apollo 8 earthrise picture? What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8? Or Voyager 1's picture of earth from 6 billion km away. Or Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field?

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I'd have gone with a spectrographic plate that demonstrated red shift to Edwin Hubble, but his conclusions came from a great many plates...

Or perhaps Cepheid variables and the plates used to discover them.

The first gave us an idea of the distance to distant galaxies, and the second provided the yardstick to measure the distance to nearer ones.

Those are good choices too. I just think its a bit pretentious of Subby to say its the most important space picture ever. One of the most iconic, yes, but the most important? You could argue over that until the cows come home. One that comes to mind, how is this more important than the picture of Buzz Aldrin on the moon that is just as iconic? Not only was that a harder picture to take, since they had to land on the freaking moon but it has an actual human in the shot on the surface of another world.

Or this one of Eugene Cernan on the freaking moon with the earth above him?

Or this one with geologist Harrison Schmitt, old glory, and the earth above it?

bbfreak:What about Lunar Orbiter 1 which took the first earthrise picture two years before Apollo 8?

Nobody in 1966 saw the image you posted, which is a modern digital processing of the original data. The ability to convert an electronic image to analog (viewable) form and reproduce it for mass media was much more limited back then, so what most people saw was this:

Just a couple years later Apollo 8 returned color film negatives physically to Earth, a vastly superior image that could be reproduced in much higher quality. That's the one that mattered.